“We have everyone you can imagine against us,” says Jack Dorsey, the CEO of mobile credit card pay startup Square and cofounder of Twitter. But he is not cowed by fact that his startup is competing against banks with far more money to spend on pushing their products to market. Because by allowing design and engineering to lead his strategic decisions, Dorsey knows that he can out-innovate everyone else. Square sees receipts not as something to be thrown away, for example, but as a “publishing medium.” Instead of making credit card transactions opaque, Square delivers a rich set of analytics to the seller. And in this video you’ll see that where many others saw useless data, Dorsey saw opportunity.

This interview is part of a series about the paths that innovators took to get where they are today. See more Innovation Agents.